A student activist in Brooklyn, NY and recent graduate of Brooklyn College, Petty began student organizing in Portland, OR during the global justice movement and helped mobilize students to shut down the WTO meetings in Seattle, Washington in 1999. She spent the following years organizing in different groups and campaigns for workplace justice, gay marriage, against the death penalty. For the past two years, Petty has been on the national coordinating committee of the Campus Antiwar Network. She is currently the downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn organizer for the International Socialist Organization.